Todd Garbarini
Entries from January 2013
By Todd Garbarini
Richard Klemensen’s Little
Shoppe of Horrors is a stellar magazine. If you like Gary Svehla’s Midnight
Marquee and similar publications that are well-written and polished, you’ll
love the beautiful Little Shoppe of
Horrors. In 2012 it entered its 40th
anniversary with the most current issue, number 29. Cinema Retro is a mere youngster by
comparison! Subtitled “The Journal of
Classic British Horror Films,†Little
Shoppe of Horrors is chock full of exclusive images of the glory days of
the Hammer horror films. It is obvious
that Mr. Klemensen has a true love for these films. In this issue you’ll find a wonderful look
back at the life and work of Vincent Price. The front and rear covers of the latest issue feature beautiful images
by Jeff Preston and Mark Maddox, respectively, of Vincent Price, and the inside
covers feature artwork by Dean Ormston and Paul Watts.
Issue #29 includes:
- · An exclusive interview with film and television
director Frank Darabont and film director Tim Burton, whose love of Vincent
Price can been seen through much of his work over the past thirty years, going
back to the very beginnings of his career with his short film, Vincent, which is about a young boy who
wants to be Vincent Price and can be seen here (it’s even narrated by Vincent Price!). Both directors talk specifically about The Abominable Dr. Phibes.
- · Justin Humphreys gives readers an
in-depth look at the making of The
Abominable Dr. Phibes in a nearly 30-page article (take that, Cinefantastique!) about the making
of the film. He also profiles the late Dr. Phibes set designer Brian Eatwell.
- · David Taylor writes about the late model-turned-actress
Virginia North who played Vulnavia in the film.
- · Author Denis Meikle provides an inside
look on the set of The Abominable Dr.
Phibes when he interviewed Vincent Price.
- · Sam Irwin and David Taylor create a chronological
history of the treatments and script ideas related to what was to become a Dr. Phibes franchise, in addition to a
look at how Dr. Phibes has lived on in novels and comic books.
And much, much more in its 108 pages.
Little Shoppe of Horrors
has a beautifully designed and easily navigable website
that permits readers to see what’s coming up in the next issue, in addition to
ordering copies of back issues.
All in all, this is a beautiful-designed and printed
publication, published first and foremost by the only people who should be
publishing it – die-hard fans with a true love for the subject matter. A must for horror fans!
As an aside, there is also a wonderful audio interview that
was recently conducted with Mr. Klemensen, and you can click here
to listen to it. He explains how he was
such a fan of these movies and how they differed from other horror films from
the time in that they were in color and featured classically-trained actors
such as Christopher Lee and Peter Cushing who both starred in innumerable roles
for Hammer. He also talks about how he
contacted people in the British film industry who were more than willing to
talk to him about their work, and how he managed to visit Pinewood Studios in
England.
By Todd Garbarini
The
Definitive Document of the Dead
is the latest incarnation of director Roy Frumkes’s insightful
behind-the-scenes look at the making of George A. Romero’s Dawn of the Dead (1978), a film that has achieved a level of
adoration and cult status that is truly amazing given that it was released
unrated at a time when such a maneuver was considered box office poison. No doubt increasing in popularity after its
release on VHS (this is where Yours Truly first saw it in the summer of 1985), Dawn has become the zombie film by which
all others are measured. What this 16mm documentary
illustrates brilliantly is the creative process that a director must go
through, and it conveys it extremely well to the average moviegoer who may not
have the slightest idea as to how a movie is made. It looks at its subject from
the standpoint of filmmaking as an art form, and at one point director Romero,
with omnipresent cigarette in hand, even compares the process to painting, and
how an artist uses watercolors and “accidents†in their final work. Dawn went
into production in October 1977 at the Monroeville Mall in Monroeville,
Pennsylvania and lasted approximately six months (if you believe the Internet
Movie Database) and thankfully Mr. Frumkes actively sought and was given access
to the mall set over a weekend in January of 1978 (my guess is that this was
the third or fourth week of that month as the archival footage shows the entire
exterior of the mall blanketed in snow; the entire Northeast had suffered a snowfall
of one to nearly two feet at that time).
Most documentaries that appear on DVD
and Blu-ray nowadays are nothing more than self-promotion pieces. The Definitive Document of the Dead, on
the other hand, actually takes you behind the scenes of the film and enlightens
the viewer on the creative process, specifically the teamwork and the
collaborative nature of the people working on the film. Mr. Frumkes talks to Tom Savini, Michael
Gornick, John Amplas, Richard Rubenstein, the cast of Dawn, and of course director Romero himself (it’s interesting to
note that filming had to be suspended from Thanksgiving until just after
Christmas as decorations populated the mall. Of course, nowadays Christmas
starts being promoted as early as the end of August, something probably
completely unheard of 35 years ago!). The
documentary gives us a great look into Mr. Romero's creative methods of
filmmaking; he is quite candid about how he makes movies and discusses how he
feels about being compared to Alfred Hitchcock with his 1968 film Night of the Living Dead. The comparison probably stems from the fact
that the opening scenes look like a throwback to silent cinema storytelling,
and that is an area that Night excels
at, giving visual information to the audience and pulling us into the movie. There is mention of Howard Hawks’s film
version of The Thing, released in
1951, as the movie that introduced Mr. Romero to horror and the idea of
confined spaces made him want to make movies. Another pivotal film that is not touched upon
in this documentary (but is mentioned on the newly-recorded commentary provided
by Mr. Frumkes) is Michael Powell and Emerich Pressburger's The Tales of Hoffmann, also from 1951, a
film that was an enormous influence on Mr. Romero and aided in the creation of
his own personal visual style. He also
talks about how actor Duane Jones, the lead black actor in Night, was chosen simply because he was the best actor who
auditioned for the role, squashing rumors that he was making a statement about the
black man’s struggles in a white man’s world. Naturally, this draws comparisons
to Ken Foree’s role in Dawn. Richard
Rubenstein also weighs in and discusses the European style of producing, and
how Dario Argento and his brother Claudio co-financed Dawn. Dawn was originally
a much darker picture with a very down and bleak ending. As shooting
progressed, the film took on a comic bookish feel and there is an obvious
lightening up of mood. Whereas Mr. Romero had a crew of about eight people on Martin (1977), Dawn has a cast and crew
in the hundreds. The most fascinating part of the documentary has Mr. Romero
describing the rhythms created by editing and spatial design. Prior to his
foray into feature filmmaking, Mr. Romero honed his editing skills by making many
30-second commercials (like Sir Ridley Scott who made roughly 3000(!) prior to The Duellists (1977) and Alien (1979).
After a discussion about the
distribution of the film and leaving it unrated with a running time of just over
two hours, the documentary switches gears to the 1989 summer filming of Two Evil Eyes (1991). Mr. Romero
discusses how he wants a family atmosphere on the set without any of the political
Hollywood nonsense. There is also a
follow-up segment on Land of the Dead
(2005) which focuses on Mr. Romero's daughter, Tina Romero, who discusses how
she got involved in filmmaking. Be
warned: there is a trailer for a hard-core sex parody of Night, and I'll let your imagination guess what the title of this
film is! While this trailer does not
contain any overt sex, there is much nudity.
There is also footage of the Chiller Theatre
convention in 2005 which features a reunion of the cast of Day of the Dead, discussions with Greg Nicotero, Bill Lustig, and
some of the cast and crew of Dawn.
The final segments, all of which are shot on standard definition video, ends
with Mr. Frumkes heading to the Toronto set of Diary of the Dead in the fall of 2006. While these last few segments are nowhere
near as incisive as the footage shot for Dawn,
they still are relevant, fun to watch and make The Definitive Document of the Dead a worthy addition to the libraries
of Romero fans.
This documentary has been available on
home video several times before. It first made the rounds in 1985, and I first
time I saw it was four years later when it was released on VHS. It also appears
on Dawn of the Dead: the Ultimate Edition,
which was released on DVD in September 2004. Synapse Films then released it on DVD in 1999 with some nice extras,
including a commentary with Mr. Frumkes and some cast and crew members. This latest version, The Definitive Document of the Dead, goes further than its previous
incarnations. In addition to the extra
footage that has been added, it begins with a slightly different beginning than
its predecessors: a very humorous introduction by Mr. Romero for the audience
at a screening at the Alamo Drafthouse in Austin, TX and segues into a little
bit of a discussion that he had in 2006 in Huntington, Long Island.
The documentary is available in two
flavors: as a single, stand-alone standard definition DVD with a newly-recorded
commentary provided by Mr. Frunkes running 102 minutes that covers Dawn up to Diary, and as a limited edition DVD/Blu-ray combo set that includes
a standard definition DVD with the aforementioned extras, plus a Blu-ray of Mr.
Frumkes’s original, 1978 documentary Document
of the Dead, which runs 66 minutes and was scanned in high definition from
the 16mm master. If you have a Blu-ray
player, it is worth spending the extra cash to get the limited edition, which
also contains a fold-out poster of Wes Benscoter’s beautiful new cover art for
the DVD and Blu-ray. Have a look at this
artist’s website. His work is brilliant.
NOTE: It has come to our attention that the Blu-ray edition of this title sold out immediately. The DVD edition is still available from Amazon. Click here to order
By Todd Garbarini
Frankenweenie (2012) is an animated big-screen expansion
of Tim Burton's own 1984 live-action short film of the same name and utilizes
the Frankenstein monster tale by Mary Shelley to tell a clever and ultimately
moving story about a young boy, Victor Frankenstein, and how he copes with the
loss of his beloved dog. This is a
universal scenario that every child who grows up with a pet must face at some
point. I have only seen a handful of
films tackle this subject, and Don Coscarelli’s 1975 outing Kenny and Company is notable for its
depiction of a young boy who must take his dog to the vet to be put to
sleep.
Victor loves making 16mm movies with
his dog, Sparky, in his hometown of New Holland, which is constructed to look
like Everytown, USA. Sparky stars as the
“Sparkysaurus.†After all, what young
boy doesn't love dinosaurs? Mixing
footage of Sparky with self-made animation, Victor's movie illustrates an
imagination no doubt inspired by The
Twilight Zone and The Beast from
20,000 Fathoms (1953). Victor,
obviously an alter-ego for director Burton, is an awkward child who keeps a low
profile from his classmates and his neighbor Mr. Burgermeister (a nice nod to
Rankin and Bass) who brandishes a hedge clipper. During a baseball game, Victor hits a home
run, but Sparky chases the ball into the street and is killed by a car. Devastated, Victor mopes through school until
his science teacher, Mr. Rzykruski, a grotesque caricature of a man, shows the
class how to use electricity to move a dead frog’s legs. Experiencing a “Eureka!†moment, Victor is
filled with a new sense of purpose, and converts his parent’s attic into a
makeshift laboratory. Following his
teacher’s instructions, he reanimates Sparky with the help of lightning.
Victor does his best to keep Sparky’s reemergence
a secret. A creepy, overzealous kid from
the neighborhood, Edgar, wants to know how Victor did it. Word gets out about Sparky, and other children
competing for a science project attempt similar experiments until things get
out of control: a rat becomes a crazed monster; a turtle is made enormous and
stomps among a town square carnival like a mixture of Godzilla and Gamera; sea monkeys
run amok through the streets; a cute, next-door poodle who fancies Sparky is
made to resemble Elsa Lanchester. (There are some cute inside jokes here: the
name "Shelley" appears on a tombstone and Bambi is displayed on a local theatre marquee, perhaps as much a
nod to the classic short film Bambi Meets
Godzilla as it is an homage to the Disney film.) The climax is a loving homage to James Whale’s
1931 classic that started it all and fueled nightmares for years to come.
Thematically, Frankenweenie shares many similarities to Henry Selick's 1993 film The Nightmare Before Christmas (produced
by Burton) in that a protagonist compelled to do a good deed ends up making a
mess of things. Most of the characters,
particularly the children, have predominantly large eyes, as if they stepped
out of a Margaret Keane painting (it’s no wonder that she is the subject of the
director’s next film, due for release later this year).
Filmed on Canon EOS 5D Mark II single
lens reflux cameras and printed in black and white, Frankenweenie looks lovely and is easily one of the year’s best
films. It should win the Oscar for Best
Animated Feature. It would be nice to
see black and white return to the screen as an art form as it truly looks beautiful. Danny Elfman provides yet another memorable
score to a Tim Burton film.
There are a few nice extras included on the Blu-ray disc:
- · We get a short film starring Sparky called Captain Sparky vs. the Flying Saucers,
the in-movie that appears at the start of the film and runs roughly two and a-half-minutes in
length (no relation to Siskel and Ebert’s Sparky the Wonder Dog of PBS’s Sneak Previews from the early 1980s.).
- · Miniatures in Motion: Bringing
Frankenweenie to Life is
an excellent behind-the-scenes documentary featurette that runs about 23 minutes
(I wish it was longer) and takes us to the massive 60,000 foot soundstage in London
where the film was shot and contains comments from the many animators who
worked on the individual scenes – they all averaged about two minutes per week
of screen time! What is truly
extraordinary about this piece is seeing the astonishing level of detail and
attention that is made to even the smallest of items. You get a new appreciation of the film and all
the hard work that went into making it. Absolutely nothing in this movie has
been computer-generated. It was all designed, built, and manufactured for the
film.
- · The Frankenweenie Touring Exhibit is enough to make one jealous if you
don’t live in one of the cities that it comes to.
- · Tim
Burton's original 1984 featurette, Frankenweenie,
upon which this film is based. This wonderful live-action film was financed by
Disney and the producers were reportedly shocked at how frightening it would be
for children, so much so that they fired Burton and shelved the project. It runs 30 minutes and stars Barret Oliver (The Neverending Story) as Victor, the
young son of Ben and Susan (Daniel Stern and Shelley Duvall). Sofia Coppola, inexplicably using the name
Domino, appears as a friend of Victor’s.
It would have been nice to have a
running commentary with Tim Burton or from the animators as I love commentaries
and eagerly listen to them whenever they appear as extras. However, this is a minor quibble. The film looks absolutely amazing on Blu-ray
and is a worthy addition to your collection.
Click here to order order 4 disc deluxe edition with DVD and digital copies included.
By Todd Garbarini
It's hard to believe that Pixar Animation
Studios’ Finding Nemo, which was
released on Friday, May 30, 2003, is now ten years-old. One of the most popular
animated films of all time, Finding Nemo
is a delightful excursion into the world of undersea life with plenty of
colorful characters to go around. Employing the voice talents of some of
Hollywood's best-known and most respected performers, Finding Nemo aims to not only entertain us but educate us, as well.
It succeeds extraordinarily well in
doing both.
Despite the years of science that I've
accumulated under my belt by way of elementary, intermediate, and high school,
I must plead ignorance and admit to never having heard of a clownfish (scientifically
known as Amphiprion ocellaris) prior
to Finding Nemo. Director Andrew Stanton reportedly saw these water
dwellers in an aquarium in Florida and their vibrant look helped provide
inspiration for the film. The
aptly-named Marlin and Coral are two such fish, parents just starting a family.
Unfortunately, a barracuda attack leaves Marlin alone except for one remaining
fish egg out of roughly one hundred which he decides to name Nemo, a name that
his wife Coral liked prior to her untimely demise. As a result of this attack, Nemo suffers from
a malformed right fin, making him the runt of the litter, so to speak. Due to this perceived limitation, Marlin
becomes just a tad overprotective and overbearing and follows Nemo wherever he
goes, looking out for him. When Nemo
goes off to school to learn the ways of underwater sea life, his father finds
it very difficult to let him go off on his own. This frustration leads Nemo to rush off into unchartered waters where he
is swooped up by humans, possibly to never see his father again. Marlin sets out to rescue him, and is
befriended by Dory, a well-intentioned regal blue tang who suffers from
short-term memory loss. They join forces
to locate Nemo after a clue that reveals he is in Sydney, Australia. Along the way they encounter some crazy
characters, such as a shark who is swearing off eating fish; a group of
jellyfish; a group of sea turtles caught up in the East Australian Current; and
a pelican who is trying to help Nemo. Added
to this mix are a few human characters, specifically a dentist whose fish tank
is home to a motley crew of sea life all trying to help Nemo (who is now a
prisoner in the tank) get home. One of
his patients is his niece, Darla, a pre-prepubescent nightmare sporting metal
braces and is the film’s answer to Toy
Story’s Sid, the kid down the block who loves to destroy toys.
The film is beautifully animated. Pixar
has certainly come a long way from its early days; more money, of course, means
better technology and the underwater world of Finding Nemo really comes to life here in a way that 1989’s The Little Mermaid only hinted at. The nuances in the plant life are exquisite,
and the banter between the characters is laugh-out-loud funny. The underrated Albert Brooks, whom I liked so
much in Taxi Driver (1976), Broadcast News (1987), and Drive (2011), voices Marlin with a
fatherly exuberance and concern. Ellen
DeGeneres is his equal as Dory, the forgetful fish. Also on hand are Willem Dafoe, Allison
Janney, Austin Pendleton, Geoffrey Rush, and Elizabeth Perkins. In the same way that Jaws (1975) made oceanographers and marine biologists out of
wide-eyed children in the audience fascinated by the Carcharodon carcharias, Finding Nemo his more than likely inspired
more than a few future Jacques Cousteaus.
As to be expected, the Blu-ray is a
revelation, and Finding Nemo has
never looked better on home video. There
is a clarity, sharpness and depth that truly amazing to see. The film comes in two flavors on disc: a
three-disc set and a five-disc set (this contains a 3D version of the film). The first Blu-ray disc extras contains the
following extras in high definition: a cute, three and-a-half minute short from
1989 called Knick Knack; a
five-minute loop called “Aquarium†that allows you to run continuously on the
monitor; “CineExplore,†a feature that
allows you to view the complete film while hearing comments from the filmmakers
with superimposed storyboards on the screen; “Finding Nemo: A Roundtable Discussion†is a seventeen-minute discussion
among the filmmakers reminiscing ten years after the film’s release; “Reinventing
the Submarine Voyage†at Disneyland, runs roughly fifteen minutes and looks at
the underwater sea rides; alternate opening (three minutes); and “A Lesson in
Flashbacks†which runs eight minutes wherein the director recalls how the film
was originally conceived. The second Blu-ray contains the following extras all
ported over from the original 2004 DVD release, which are all in standard
definition with the exception of “Aquariums†and “Art Review†(an eight-minute discussion
of concept design); “Making Nemo†is a 25-minute documentary on the making of
the film; “Exploring the Reef†is exactly what the title entails; “Studio Tourâ€
which takes the audience behind the doors of Pixar for five minutes; several
outtakes, deleted scenes, and publicity pieces; and “Mr. Ray’s Enclyclopedia.â€
It is interesting to note that Pixar
was more focused on The Incredibles (2004)
during the making Finding Nemo,
believing that the former would be the huge hit and the latter would do minimal
business. Universal Pictures did the
same thing in 1974 when they were making The
Hindenburg and gave the green light to Jaws,
thinking that the star-studded disaster film by Robert Wise Allen would be the box
office champ while the film about a Great White Shark was their “little
picture.â€
Finding
Nemo is a big picture of the little
clownfish that could.
Click here to order Blu-ray 5-disc set from Amazon
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